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Ekko’s ultimate will no longer be free-to-cast after Patch 5.12. Also, Meddler has confirmed that Lux will be able to pre-detonate her E and he also chimed in on yesterday’s confirmed Aatrox buffs. Lastly, some context on the Ryze nerfs that’re headed to live.

So first of all, giving his ult a mana cost is not likely to solve any of the frustration problems it might have. In the vast majority of fights it’s going to be used the same way, under the same contexts. If the spell needs a downside (not saying it does) giving it a mana cost isn’t going to solve that.

That said, from a design standpoint I do agree that there is something to the idea of “he’s been spamming spells and is out of mana, now is my chance to strike.” His ult not having a cost directly avoids the minor gameplay idea of “characters are weak when they’re OOM.” My bad on that one. We’ll be fixing it for 5.12 by upping the cost to 100 (from 0). There were localization things that prevented it getting in for 5.11.

As a side note, adding higher mana costs across Ekko’s kit (we’re also upping W cost to 50 from 30 in 5.11) helps mitigate burst in an indirect manner. Higher costs means he has a harder time farming and may want to invest in more mana/regen itemization. More gold spent on mana + less gold overall = lower AP totals at X point in the game.

Pre-detonate on Lux E is something we’ve got on our backlog and will add at somepoint. It will add a bit of power, but should give a clear feel improvement and help out players with higher pings. Should be a pretty straight forward change, I’ll see where it’s up to, that’s one we should have got in previously.

Shield application at end of cast’s currently intended functionality, rather than a bug. Having said that I do agree that there’s a noticeable feel cost there, given almost every other shield in the game is immediate. I’ll pass that suggestion on to the balance team, see if they’ve got any concerns about bundling it with the pre-detonate change.

Ryze isn’t much of a winrate problem at the moment. He’s just a crappy experience to play against, mainly due to an abusive skill order option. This was a slip up on my end in the 5.10 buffs, but I believe it can be addressed in a way that leaves the core high moments (rapid chain casting, NOT 100% uptime rooting) of the character intact while limiting some of the more abusive stuff. It’s perfectly justifiable for players to be vocal about something that looks and feels unfair, regardless of whether or not they have numerical data to support their claims. You shouldn’t need to know Ryze’s win rate in order to tell me he feels dumb to play against.